1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to object detecting devices, radar devices, and object detection methods and, in particular, to an object detecting device, a radar device, and an object detection method that are incorporated into a vehicle or a road infrastructure system and can detect target objects individually and with high accuracy.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a vehicle-mounted radar device that detects target objects (including any of the other vehicle, a pedestrian, a two-wheel vehicle, and something placed on the road) which are present around a subject vehicle has been incorporated into vehicles including passenger cars. The vehicle-mounted radar device detects the position of a target object which comes closer to the subject vehicle from the front or the side thereof based on a transmission direction of a radar signal, a delay time between transmission and reception of the radar signal, and the received power of a reflected signal and measures the position and/or the speed of the target object relative to the subject vehicle. Then, based on the measurement results, the vehicle-mounted radar device determines the presence or absence of a possibility of a collision between the subject vehicle and the target object. If the vehicle-mounted radar device determines that there is a possibility of a collision, the vehicle-mounted radar device performs collision avoidance by further outputting a warning to the driver or automatically controlling the subject vehicle.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-156567, a technique of individually detecting nearby vehicles by a vehicle-mounted radar device is disclosed. A common radar device obtains a plurality of strong reflecting points (hereinafter referred to as capture points) from one target object. The radar device of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-156567 first estimates the traveling direction of a target object relative to a subject vehicle in order to perform grouping of a plurality of capture points obtained from one and the same target object. Then, the radar device of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-156567 provides a rectangular frame in the relative traveling direction, groups the capture points which are present in the rectangular frame, and detects these capture points as one target object.